


Three for the Price of One

by Caffeinated_Owlbear



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: And Terrorizes a Business Meeting, Handsome Jack (Borderlands) Has a Migraine, Headaches & Migraines, Hyperion, Hyperion Corporate Shenanigans, Jack being Jack, Kind of a sickfic I guess?, Of a Fairly Dark Variety, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:48:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23716195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caffeinated_Owlbear/pseuds/Caffeinated_Owlbear
Summary: Handsome Jack has a migraine in the middle of a business meeting.  This isn't going to go well for anyone involved.
Kudos: 19





	Three for the Price of One

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a migraine sufferer, myself, and I strongly believe that the vault symbol in Jack's face causes him occasional migraines of a particularly nasty variety.
> 
> The fic starts as a flow of consciousness, becomes more traditional narration later.
> 
> CW: mention of throwing up, don't read if you have emetophobia. Also generally pretty visceral descriptions of pains and aches, so use your discretion if you're affected by that sort of thing.

The worst feeling in the world is when a tiny stone gets wedged in your shoe and you just don't feel like messing with the laces for the next five minutes, so you hope the stone shifts enough to get stuck somewhere inoffensive, but no, it keeps moving around with every step you take and every new place is worse than before, but you're now committed to getting it out without taking your shoe off, so somehow, against all logic, you're stuck in a battle of wits with a freaking pebble, and if that wasn't bad enough, you're LOSING, and HOW the hell did it manage to weasel its way into your fully laced shoe anyway, and WHY the hell won't it weasel its way out the same way, and by the time you give up and yank off the goddamn shoe, there IS no stone in it, so what the hell even was that, does the universe just hate you or something?

_...and with the improved CTA in the latest campaign, the conversion rate has skyrocketed 30% month-over-month... _

Or maybe it's when you wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and this close to delirious because the last-night version of you stumbled in half-conscious and must've pawed at the wrong button on the climate control panel, and the asleep version of you had, inconceivably, cocooned himself in a blanket that's way too warm, and now you've half-molten into goo inside this blanket chrysalis, why do you even own that blanket, this is a state-of-the-art space station with, yes,  _ usually _ state-of-the-art climate control, and you know you need to sit up, breathe, drink some water, or maybe stick your whole head under a tap and catch some in your mouth while at it, but you're too nauseous to do anything except watch the universe spin around you in a decaying orbit, haha, guess you really  _ are _ the center of the universe after all, but you shouldn't have laughed at that because now you're gonna throw up, and the only thing that gets you moving is not wanting to be found in the morning choked to death on your own vomit.

_...claimed to be superior to the new Leverage series, but our product is still outperforming the competition by a factor of… _

Or maybe, for a much simpler example, the worst feeling in the world is absentmindedly picking your nose after eating jalapeño fries.

_...given the highly successful test figures of the prototype, serial production of the upgraded Projectile Convergence will proceed on schedule…  _

Jack tries to drag his attention to Henderson's report. It’s an important meeting. Jack had called it, so of friggin' course it is. And the man sure does drone on, but Jack really does wanna hear the latest figures. Especially since, based on what little he's managed to catch so far, the figures are GOOD.

The actual worst feeling in the world is when the top three worst feelings in the world mold together like some gene splicing accident in R&D, and the resulting abomination spreads itself all over your face in a fine layer, just thin enough to sit between the skin you were born with and the mask you put on this morning. 

The burning. A delicate finger dipped in acid and dusted with jalapeño powder, tracing the outer edges of the Vault brand. Not the actual scar, that doesn't feel like anything. The edges. Just the edges.

The nonexistent pebble. A diamond shard, every edge a cutting one, shifting away under his fingers at every attempt to dislodge it, or even to dig it further into the skin, just so it would Stay Freaking Put.

The nausea. Pulsing out of his left eye in waves, each one stronger than the last. Like a beacon that's getting closer, the radar ever louder. Beep…

Jack's fingers tighten on the armrest of his chair. No. The Hero of Pandora and Six Galaxies' CEO of the Year three years running is not going to let his own quarterly meeting get derailed by a freaking  _ headache. _

Beep… beep… beep…

He's actually _ hearing _ the beeping now. Fan-fucking-tastic. Let's add "auditory hallucinations" to the list of Vault Migraine symptoms. Improve the quality of the ECHOnet search results for the next person to get a Vault symbol sucker-punched into their face by a psychotic siren.

Jack's fingers tighten on the handle of his gun.

Beep… beep… 

BANG.

There's a small yelp and a handful of gasps, which fade into crowded silence. Jack follows the path of the shot with his eyes. There's a small smoking hole in the corner of the holo-screen. None in Henderson.

"Well?" Jack prompts after an excruciating thirty seconds of no-one bothering to take initiative.

"Yes, Jack?" Henderson answers, his voice only shaking a bit.

"Do you know what heckling is, Henderson?" Jack asks. "It's when you get booed off the stage 'cause you're So Goddamn Boring that you make my company's kick-ass quarterly figures sound about as exciting as the speeches Tassiter used to give at his birthday parties. You know he tried to make attendance mandatory? For, like, two years, then he had a full-blown strike on his hands. First and only strike in Hyperion history, true story."

A small wave of chuckles rolls through the conference room. Jack can see Henderson's jaw tighten. The man doesn't really deserve to be humiliated like this; there'll be an extra five percent in his next bonus. Seven if he takes the hint and wraps up the meeting in the next five, four-

"Apologies, Mr. Handsome Jack, sir." 

Oof. Maybe he should scrap the bonus idea and up his security a few notches, instead. He's always been on Jack-name basis with the execs. Henderson giving him that honorific sandwich, with the Handsome thrown in there for good measure, that’s a not-so-subtle promise that today's incident will be remembered.

"Ah, whatcha gonna do." Jack waves his hand dismissively. "Not everyone's a natural born public speaker like yours truly, I guess I forget that sometimes."

Jack gives the room a smile, and gets back a range of responses from the 'you're my boss and you can end me where I stand so I'll pretend I like your shitty jokes' kinda smiles, to laughs so hearty you  _ know  _ they’ve been practiced for hours in front of the mirror. He waits for the mostly feigned amusement to die down. For the silence to become uncomfortable. And then a bit longer, until no-one is sure if they should be looking at Jack or avoiding his eye at any cost.

Then Jack speaks, gesturing with his hands as one might do to despair over a dog who refuses to be house trained.

"Oh god, what is WRONG with you people? No, no, PLEASE nobody start answering that. Meeting adjourned, leave the reports, buh-bye, aloha, shoo, scram, get outta here, just GO."

Henderson is the last to leave. From the look he gives Jack as he places his reports on the table, yeah, a security upgrade is definitely in order. But hey, silver lining, no need to waste company money on the "sorry you got reamed out in front of the C-suite" bonus-bonus.

Plus, the last few minutes were amusing enough to distract him from the migraine. Just like any real pain in the ass- Oh god, let's never actually have that migraine in the ass, though... Anyway, just like the aforementioned, the Vault Migraine is an attention whore. Ignore it for long enough, and it'll go away on its-

Jack's stomach flips upside down, with zero warning. He's just fast enough to grab an abandoned coffee mug from the conference table. Anyone with slower reflexes would now have to ask Henderson for a clean copy of the quarterly figures.

Well, hey, at least he was alone in the room. Jack's never subscribed by the whole "never let them see you bleed" thing _literally_ : as far as he's concerned, a wound or two shows you're not afraid to get your hands dirty and adds to the whole hero thing. But puking his guts out in front of the execs, that he's gotta draw the line at.

Jack wipes his mouth with his hand. Wipes his hand on the nearby chair. Opens the clasps on his mask one by one, and takes it off. Wipes his mouth again, his lips coarse against his hand. Stops himself from touching any more of his face until the mask is back on.

Okay. He can get to his office now. Without passing out halfway. Probably.

Jack gets to his feet. The genetically spliced abomination of the three worst feelings in the world for the price of one slides its tendrils between his skin and mask again. One tendril turns into an ice pick and stabs through his left eye. He grabs the back of his chair for support.

"Ah, shit…" Jack mutters. He can hear the nausea radar beeping again, faint but getting louder. He steadies himself and closes his eyes. Lets go of the chair. Takes a tentative step away from it. Another. Could he get all the way to his office with his eyes closed?

No, Jack finds out a few seconds later, rubbing a freshly forming bruise on his leg and opening his eyes just to give the conference table a stinky look. Note to self, program furniture to get out of his way.

Jack falls back into his chair. Note to self, updated: include very clear instructions on  _ when _ furniture should get out of his way.

Jack considers the unfortunate coffee mug on the conference table, pulls out his gun again and flips through the elemental modes. He freezes the mug's contents first, vaporizes the whole thing second. 

Then he pulls out his ECHOcomm.

"Call Meg."

**Author's Note:**

> So what happens next is:  
> \- Meg arrives on the scene, has a couch digi-structed in the conference room, puts lights on a voice-activated dimmer, and declares the entire floor off-limits for the rest of the day;  
> \- a couple of days later, a loader bot stops by Meg's desk to drop off a bag of unreasonably expensive coffee from a few planets away;  
> \- she makes a point to have that coffee at her desk where Jack can see her drinking it; just once, then she takes the bag home.


End file.
